In this, our fourth year, we once again have the opportunity to help out at the Ross School of Learning teaching dance to their lovely students! We continued the lessons with Danielle Schulz in Week Two! Enjoy reading about Danielle’s experiences below….

On day 1 we used movement with alliteration and name as an icebreaker to warm the students up. We focused on ballet warm-up, and choreography with theater and swing styles emphasizing performance. We made a game out of using creative shapes and props with the music.

Tuesday we started off using names with movement and reversing the setup as a warmup and icebreaker before getting into modern warmup exercises like x-rolls, drop swings, triplets, jumps. The main set was choreography based on ideas from the students of happiness, both solos and group choreography. We ended with a game based on untangling a human knot using pool noodles.

On Day 3 each student picked an animal and a quality out of a hat and then described the combination through movement. Our technique focus for the day was on Ballet and Modern mixed with the Forsythe technique. We also focused on mainly reinforcing the dance work we had gone over from the first 2 days and ran through a medley of games to wind down including melting popsicles and rewind dancing.

Day 4! We did a consolidated warm-up with Flocking as a game to teach moving within a space as a unit and using pool noodles to create patterns within a space as well. Like yesterday we focused on the previous choreography, repeating the set several times.

At the end of the day we met with the other departments to watch a fashion show, attend an art showing and saw “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” performed by the drama department.

The students gained a great amount of experience working together as a unit and moving as one.

Overall, the students learned how to combine technique, muscle memory, and performance quality to perform well as a unit.